Accompanying the band will be Veara, After Midnight Project, Handguns and State Champs.

The “United Scenes of America” tour kicked off March 31 with a show at the Carriage House in Louisville Ohio. It will run through May 7 and Hawthorne Heights will be playing venues from Webster Hall in New York City to the Waiting Room in Omaha, Nebraska with few days of rest in between. They’ll be in Poughkeepsie at The Chance tonight before finally making it to Albany Thursday.

“It’s all a good time and a grind at the same time. I miss my family and my bed, but I get to see the world and play music for our fans, ” said frontman and rhythm guitarist JT Woodruff.

This won’t be the first time the band has played Albany, and one fan said she couldn’t wait for the their return.

Although retailers are quick to label them alternative rock, the band’s musical style is hard to tie to just one genre. Their music flows between hardcore, screamo, and pop punk territories with a bit of electronica flare thrown in on the last album.

Even those unfamiliar with the band are likely to know their 2004 single, “Ohio is for Lovers,” from the their first album The Silence in Black and White. The song got massive airplay on both radio and MTV; which helped make the album former label Victory Record’s highest selling debut at that time.

Silence was followed by 2006’s If Only You Were Lonely and2008’s Fragile Future. Last year saw the release of two Hawthorne Heights albums, Midwesterners, a greatest hits record released by Victory, andSkeletons, a new album written for current label Wind-up Records.

The Albany Centinel, March 18, 1803, Volume VI, Issue 74, Page 3

Frontman Woodruff said he’d love to see fans pick up Skeletons on vinyl, but that’s only one of the options available. Music production has come a long way since the days when Albany residents had limited access to music from brick and mortar stores. Now, fans can buy their music on CD, vinyl, or over the internet via online MP3 stores.

According to Woodruff, the last few years have been a “long, strange journey” for the band.

Shortly before the release of their second album in 2006 Victory Records sent fans a controversial message via e-mail and MySpace.

It urged fans to help “rock music” by making sure If Only You Were Lonelysold more copies than Def Jam artist Ne-Yo’s In My Own Words which was set for release the same day.

Street teams – groups of fans that volunteer time to distribute promotional material for a band – were encouraged to pick up, rearrange, and move copies of Ne-Yo’s album in stores so it appeared to be out of stock to fans looking to buy it.

Though this message came from the label and not Hawthorne Heights itself, the band still had to deal with the controversy that sprang up around the incident. They announced in August of 2006 that they would be leaving the label and they later sued them, which set off a legal battle that dragged on until May 2007.

With the court battle over the band embarked on another tour. The brief period of excitement was cut short by the accidental death of then-leading guitarist and unclean vocalist Casey Calvert. He was found dead on the band’s tour bus shortly before they were due for a sound check at Washington D.C.’s 9:30 Club. Calvert died from mixing his doctor-prescribed depression and anxiety medication and the pain-killer Vicodin, prescribed by a dentist after a root canal done just prior to the tour.

The band was devastated by the loss, but Woodruff said they found much-needed relief by turning to their music.

Cover of Skeletons (Courtesy Wind-up Records)

“Music helps me with everything, whether it is writing-performing-or listening. I strum the guitar to get me through bad times, and to create good times.”

The remaining four members resolved not to replace Calvert with another “screamer” and instead tour as a four-piece. Because of this they had to adjust their style to make up for his absence, as unclean vocals were a big part of their earlier work.

“We have certainly had to learn to adapt. It’s different now, because it has to be…not by choice. We love everything we have released, but we wish Casey were here with us,” said Woodruff.

Regardless of the bad things they’ve been through, Hawthorne Heights has continued to truck on these last few years; playing gigs across the country, releasing their latest album Skeletonsand making sure to have a blast wherever they find themselves.

“I think we are happy to be friends and making music,” Woodruff said. “That will always be enough.” -30-